The Spirit in Human Evolution - Waldorf Research Institute

the soul is intermediary between the two. A thought which arises in the spirit is translated
by the soul into the wish to realize it, and only through this can it become deed, with the
help of the body as instrument.” 26 The soul, then, is the mediator between the body and
the intentions of the individual.
The human soul becomes not only the stage upon which his or her biography,
thoughts, feelings and intentions unfold, but a stage upon which the drama of cosmic
events are played out. The human being is not merely a spectator at this drama but, as
Steiner put it, “human beings with their soul life are the stage upon which world events
play. … The remainder of nature, which is at the same time a cosmic process, enters the
human being. The human soul is a stage upon which not simply a human, but a cosmic
process plays out.” 27 As spiritual beings, we are linked to the spiritual world, just as we
are linked to the natural world through our physicality, although since our ordinary
consciousness arises out of the brain, our awareness of our spirituality is usually covered
up, hidden or occult.
That historically this was not always the case suggests that the relationship
between body, soul and spirit has been a changing one. What we understand of child
development reveals the same trend in the emergent individual. Young children have
far greater access to spiritual perceptions than adults, and only through the hard work of
exercising the mind through meditation or through concentration can adults once more
attain this kind of consciousness. The difference between child and adult, and presumably
between pre-historic individual and modern person, is the degree of self-consciousness
that accompanies spiritual awareness.
Thought enables the human being to transcend the imperatives of the sentient
soul. We can choose not to act out this or that urge or desire. Thought gives us a degree
of freedom from the compulsion of following our bodily nature. It also enables us to
apply conceptual and combinatory thinking to solving problems through the use of
technology. Thought also gives us access to an understanding of the laws that govern
the world. It gives access to knowledge about the world and ourselves and this in turn
leads to a search for the truth.
Just as the brain is the center of the bodily organization, the “I” is the center of the
soul. Through the “I” we have access to the spiritual realities of life. When an individual’s
thoughts and deeds are motivated out of an experience of self-existent truth, that means
being entirely free of any self-determined sympathies, the “I” becomes the inner soul of
the soul. At this point the individual can begin to experience the truth directly. Spiritual
insight leads to the need for inner development and arises out of it. The human drive to
develop, something absent in animals, is an expression of the spiritual within the human
being.
The spirit of the individual, the “I,” works to refine and individualize the lower
“bodies” of the developing individual. Throughout the development of the individual,
the spirit works as a determining force from within. It is also the human spirit which has
been at work throughout human evolution, working to refine the physical and life bodies
as well as the sentient bodies or souls of our ancestors to make them more permeable to
the self-experience of the spirit itself. As Steiner himself put it:
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26
Steiner, R., 1970, Theosophy, p80.
27
Steiner, R., 1996, The Foundations of Human Experience, Anthroposophic Press, p77.
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